Re:Breeding for blue beards on white

Using Sly Fox would not be the best route towards this goal.. Any iris
with a cartenoid beard would work against increasing anthocyanin.

There have been a few good iris that aproach this goal. If you can
find it MARGARET VIOLA WHITE by Lloyd Zurbrig would be a good one
to use. The best in this colour that I know of.

To get a dark black beard on white, you need something heavy in
aphylla inheritence to start with and then as many doses of the
dominant reduction of anthocyanin "I" as you can get. You need the
anthocyanin enhancement gene "Ae" to get the dark beard, and this is in
a lot of dark blues/near blacks that have aphylla in background. Then
as many dosages of I as you can get. This route has produced a number
of pale blues with very dark beard such as Codicil, and Blackbeard.
Then cross to white with anthocyanin in beard. As beard gets darker it
is harder to repress the anthocyanin in petals, so it ends up being a
compomise. Using something like Sly fox could darken beard by having
both cartenoid and anthocyanin in beard. It would take some doing,
(many generations) but need to cross to something near black with dark
beard, not a light blue like Lady Celesta. Lady Celesta doesn't have
the Ae gene.